Dr. Standaert graduated from Harvard College and received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. Following Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed a Howard Hughes Fellow and completed a three-year research and clinical fellowship in Movement Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School from 1995 to 2006 and then relocated to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Currently he is the John N. Whitaker Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology and a senior member of the faculty of the Division of Movement Disorders. He is Director of the Alabama Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson Research, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the American Parkinson Disease Association, an Associate Editor of the journal Movement Disorders, a Fellow of both the American Neurological Association and the American Academy of Neurology, a Councilor of the Association of University Professor of Neurology, and a member of the NIH/NINDS Board of Scientific Counselors. His laboratory works on understanding both the root causes of Parkinson’s disease as well as the origin of the disabling symptoms that appear after long term treatment of the disease.